Competition Procedures

The rules and procedures in this section govern each Icehouse Game Design Competition and are amended by popular vote on the Talk page.

Submitting a Game

Each designer may submit one previously unpublished game which is played with Icehouse pyramids and any other equipment. Note that, the more hard-to-find equipment your game requires, the harder it will be for judges to try it out and, as a result, your ratings will likely suffer.

You may only submit your own game designs, collaboration notwithstanding (i.e. a submission does not preclude the collaborator from submitting a different game; be sure to get agreement on who is the "principal" designer of a collaboration, to avoid double-submissions!).

You may submit a game that was in a previous IGDC only if it did not win First Place.

Submit a game for judging by informing the Coordinator via e-mail (IGDC.Coordinator@gmail.com) before the submissions deadline (see Schedule above). Please only send a link to the game rules here on the wiki; submissions of PDFs, DOCs, or other file attachments will be immediately deleted (i.e. the Coordinator is not your designated wiki editor).

Judging Games

At the start of judging, the Coordinator will post the list of games above and on the Icehouse mailing list (and anywhere else the competition might gain attention, like BoardGameGeek or SuperDuperGames).

This list of submissions will be locked as will the games' rules: the Coordinator will watch this page and the game pages, to roll back any revisions during the competition.FOLKS SHOULD ONLY JUDGE GAMES AS THEY STAND ON THEIR MAIN PAGES AT THE TIME THE COMPETITION BEGINS.

(Note: If you discover something you want to change and do not want to forget about the revision, make a copy of the game on its Talk Page and make the revision there, temporarily.

Anyone who wants to do so may judge games by submitting an e-mail to the Coordinator which rates the games that he or she played on a scale of 1 to 10 based on the judge's desire to play the game again, promote it to others, and (if applicable) its aesthetic elements or conformity to a design restriction.

A game with no rating will be treated as a No Opinion rating, which does not impact a game's final average rating.

You may not include your own game (or a game on which you are a collaborator) in your ratings (i.e. give it a No Opinion rating).

You may rate games as tied with a particular rating, and you may use half-points to distinguish almost-tied games.

If you do not want your name or user ID associated with your ballot, provide the Coordinator with a "code word" so that he or she can designate your ballot publicly.

Judges are encouraged, but not required to include feedback on the games along with their ballots. Public "table talk" about the submissions while judging is open is discouraged; on the other hand, a month is a long time to hold on to all your thoughts. Including your feedback with your ballot ensures it won't be lost or forgotten. The Coordinator will publish all submitted feedback after judging has concluded.

A judge may resubmit ratings before the judging deadline, if he or she wants to change them; just be sure to inform the Coordinator in the newer e-mail that the newer ratings should replace the older ones (the Coordinator will delete the older ratings e-mail, to avoid confusion).

During the final week of judging, the Coordinator will send an email reply, to confirm receipt of each judge's ballot. If you do not receive a confirmation within a week of the judging deadline, contact the IGDC Coordinator again.

Ballot submissions will be accepted until noon Eastern Time of the Deadline for Rankings on the Schedule.

Determining the Winner

For a given game, the total sum of ratings will be divided by the total number of judges who provided a rating for that game, to get an average. Highest average is the winner. A potential winner, however, must have a total sum of ratings equal to or greater than 50% of any other game's total sum of ratings (this reduces a fanatic minority's influence on the ratings).

In the even of a tie, each tied game receives one point for each voter who rates the game above that voter's arithmetic mean score for all of the tied games. Ratings at or below the arithmetic mean receive zero points. The game with the most points wins. (This tie-braking method--Votes Exceeding Arithmetic Mean or VEAM--is basically an instant run-off using a form of approval voting.)

The Coordinator will post the results above, including the full ballots with the submitter's real name, user ID, or code word, so that judges can confirm that their ballots were considered.

Other final rankings (2nd, 3rd, etc) may also be noted on their wiki pages, if their designers so desire. Anyone who wishes to provide some other kudos is free to chime in on the Talk page (special logo graphic for use on the game page, publication somewhere other than the wiki, oatmeal cookies in the mail).

All submitted games may add the competition results Template to their pages (refer to Template:IGDCsum2007 for a model).

Finalizing a Competition

The Coordinator posts updates to this page to show ratings, total sums, final rankings, and winners.

When the subsequent IGDC is announced, the contents of the previous competition's section is moved to its own archive page, named "IGDC seasonyyyy" (refer to IGDC Summer 2007 for an example).

Note: Reverse the order of sub-sections on the final archive page: Winners, then Ratings, then Submissions, then Schedule.

Instructions to participants and judges are then posted to a new section at the top of this page, named for the season and year of the new competition (refer to IGDC/Templates for templates for that section).

Any mooted planning discussions for the new competition are moved to the Talk page for that year's eventual archive page (see #2 above for naming conventions; refer to Talk:IGDC Winter 2008 for an example).